They say that since the US-led invasion, gays are being killed because of their sexual orientation.

They blame the increase in violence on the growing influence of religious figures and militia groups in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Hussein is 32 and lives in Baghdad with his brother, sister-in-law and nieces.

"My brother's friends told him: 'In the current chaos you could get away with killing your brother without retribution and get rid of this shame,'" Hussein said.

Iraq's deputy interior minister Maj Gen Hussein Kamal told the BBC that he was unaware of any minority groups being specifically targeted for kidnappings and killings. "We do not condone vigilante action. We encourage the victims to inform the authorities if they are subjected to any attacks."

However, Hussein says gay people are afraid of the police.

The Interior Ministry is run by members of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which is one of Iraq's country's leading Shia parties.

"Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then,"* said Hussein. "Nowadays, gay men are just killed for no reason."

* funny how just about every minority group in iraq is saying that these days. makes you wonder how, if saddam was such an evil, bloodthirsty oppressor, are there any of them left to endure iraq's new "democracy" at all?

The main problem with theocratic islamic groups is that they believe that they have to uphold the Sihai (the islamic law), and that if they don't the'll go to hell. It's very sad but this is also happing in some European capitols. High-school teachers who are openly gay at middle schools are subjected to stalking and are beaten up round the clock in places like Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels by young mainly north-african islamic youngsters.

In my humble opinion, they should just cutt all the extremists balls off, so that they can't contiminate the rest of the world.

I was kidding on that one, however any extreme driven group willing to start killing other people because they are a minority or gay should be rendered eqaul to people like Adolf Hitler and Slobodan Milosovic...

But i think that people like Jerry Falwell would sound better without balls

Have been there and in a few more countries where homosexuality is outlawed. It is really mind boggling that humans/ people who have a religious war dont have a second thought about slicing someones throat because they may be Gay or whatever.Not is it only the diehard religious fanatics but there were gangs of kids roaming the streets going on the hunt for gays/ lesbians whatever. My squad was on patrol and we came across a group of it appered preteens 10 11 12 year olds stomping a young man in an alley. when we broke it up one of them spit at us and screamed that he was going to get a gun and put a bullet in my brain. gave me the willies because he was only like 13 yrs old and if I stayed around he would have been back with his gun.. No doubt about it

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when we broke it up one of them spit at us and screamed that he was going to get a gun and put a bullet in my brain. gave me the willies because he was only like 13 yrs old and if I stayed around he would have been back with his gun.. No doubt about it

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Thats when you fire 2 clips of rounds and ask questions later.

Where are you From???
Were dealing with that EXACT situation here in Saginaw.
The kid was close... 14 yrs old.

The kid was shot in the stomach by a female officer, then taken to the hospital. He was announced "Mentally disturbed" and released to go home.
He showed up running the streets with another stolen gun, looking for the cop that caught him the first time.

It's a changed world my friend, with damaged rules.
Time to put the power behind the discipline.

I am sorry, I enlisted when I was 17, I did not do it for the college or prestige. at the time I thought it was my duty, not going to college anyway have a fine job without it. served my 6 years active and extended for 1 more. But when it comes to "emptying a clip" into a 10 year old boy just went against my grain. Granted I would do it if my squad members were in immediate danger. but in most cases there is always another way. I already wake up with nightsweats from things I did and things I saw. fuck me I am only 24 dammit

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shad, thanks for sharing your perspective on all this. In addition to your direct experience, it sounds like you've thought through a lot of it. I can't imagine how rough some of the stuff you saw was, and I'm glad you made it back.

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just some more charming anecdotes about the joys of life under the fascist theocracy that our governments recently installed in iraq.
...
* funny how just about every minority group in iraq is saying that these days. makes you wonder how, if saddam was such an evil, bloodthirsty oppressor, are there any of them left to endure iraq's new "democracy" at all?

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Ah, of course. Doc, just wait. The best is yet to come. Iraq was a prelude, a stepping stone. I posted months and months back that we have just provided ourselves with a resting place, before we knock on the door of the more strategically/fiscally important neighbor. We haven't funded a coup in Iran for several decades, it's time for another. May the shah forgive us.

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But when it comes to "emptying a clip" into a 10 year old boy just went against my grain.

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trust me, it becomes a lot easier to shoot maybe-teenage brats when one's just shot your squadmate's right knee away with an AK-47. if i had to go through that again, the only thing i'd change would be to waste the little bastards BEFORE any of them opened fire.

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Ah, of course. Doc, just wait. The best is yet to come. Iraq was a prelude, a stepping stone. I posted months and months back that we have just provided ourselves with a resting place, before we knock on the door of the more strategically/fiscally important neighbor. We haven't funded a coup in Iran for several decades, it's time for another. May the shah forgive us.

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I'm sure you will continue your chicken running around with its head cut off the world is coming to an end routine no matter what happens.

Ah, of course. Doc, just wait. The best is yet to come. Iraq was a prelude, a stepping stone. I posted months and months back that we have just provided ourselves with a resting place, before we knock on the door of the more strategically/fiscally important neighbor. We haven't funded a coup in Iran for several decades, it's time for another. May the shah forgive us.

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There is a thematic link here, which relates to an Iranian journalist who was asked what the most potent image he had in his mind was from the days of the Islamic Revolution. His response was: "The bodies of the gay men hanging from the trees around the streets of Tehran".

As regards this newest report on Iraq, I had just been reading the same news piece as Dr. Rock and was also going to post it here [full text]. Under Saddam Hussein, the climate towards gays was not altogether intolerant: there were several nightclubs around Baghdad where you could watch drag acts and mingle with other men. This fell under a strange rubric within Saddam's Baathist regime, whereby certain "western frivolities" were embraced as part of a perceived cosmopolitan culture for the wealthier classes. Several of the gay venues were discussed at length in: Arno Schmitt & J. Jehoeda Sofer, Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies (1990).

The leading Shia cleric in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani, now states on his website that gays should be killed. However, he's played the old trick of only mentioning this in the Arabic section of his website, and not the English section ... an online appropriation of a technique favored in print by Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1970s and 1980s when his thoughts were published in Farsi, French and English... with significant gaps in the latter two languages.

As I stated recently on the anal sex and stool thread, the addition of homosexuality to the hate-list of Islam is, historically speaking, a relative novelty anyway:

The addition of homophobic rhetoric to Islam is a relatively recent 19th Century adjunct, at any rate, and hinges on an interpretation of the word "liwat" in the Quran... a word that means simply "people of Lot". It is stated clearly enough that the people of Lot were destroyed and cast into eternal damnation, but just what they did to deserve this fate goes unmentioned. Interpretations by Islamic scholars prior to the mid-19th Century AD favor them having been lovers of epicurean delights who indulged in all pleasures of the body and the flesh without concern for God or the passage of their soul into the afterlife. However, from the 1860s onwards, there appeared sudden concensus that this word referred exclusively to homosexuality, and it is now one of the more common curse-words used against gay men (with lesbians excluded, as in Victorian rhetoric, as this would lend credence to the notion of women having sexual desires).

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Only in some subsequent hadith has homosexuality been condemned more directly. Muslim clerics' use of hadith (defined by Wikipedia as "traditions relating to the sayings and doings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad") to ensure they have control over what Islam does or does not allow has always been the religion's most objectionable component in my view. I would characterize the hadith (with tongue slightly in cheek) as: things that the Prophet meant to say in the Quran, but somehow forgot to, so that later generations had to ensure we know that he had them in mind. In this way, Islam becomes an open door for any new prejudices that each new generation dreams up... rather than maintaining consistent values through the content of the Quran alone. It is without a doubt one of the profound ironies of so-called "Islamic fundamentalists" that their list of 'fundamentals' drawn from the hadith usually post-date the words of the Prophet by several centuries.

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Under Saddam Hussein, the climate towards gays was not altogether intolerant: there were several nightclubs around Baghdad where you could watch drag acts and mingle with other men.

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it's grimly ironic that iraq WAS the most socially progressive of the arab nations (not saying much, but even so) - now, after a healthy dose of western democracies' "tough love", it's just another anarchic medieval shithole.